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Phage (episode)
Neelix's lungs are removed by a race that suffers from a deadly phage that is slowly destroying their population. Summary Teaser After identifying a rogue planetoid that Neelix says has dilithium available for mining, ''Voyager'' is en route as Captain Janeway and Chakotay are discussing rations and what they had for breakfast. Janeway has not yet had anything, and is on her way to her private mess hall where she finds that Neelix has converted it to a galley, and is preparing meals for the crew. She tells him that he did not have permission to do so but realizes that given their current replicator and energy issues, she might not have much of a choice. Chakotay interrupts their conversation as they near the planetoid and calls for her. Neelix goes with her, leaving the duties to Ensign Parsons who is rather distraught at the mess left for him. Janeway arrives on the bridge, and Harry Kim confirms that there are dilithium readings available, while B'Elanna Torres shows subterranean caves with an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere. Chakotay confirms the readings, showing it as a Class M planet. Precise readings are difficult at best, but Torres estimates about 500 to 1,000 metric tons of raw ore down on the planet. Janeway then sends Chakotay down to the planet's caves with an away team, and advises Torres that she'd better get her refinery on line to prepare for all the ore they are about to bring up. Kim, Chakotay and Neelix (after begging to go) beam down and begin searching for the dilithium. After beaming down to the caverns, Chakotay discovers several large pockets in the vicinity. They split up and start taking geological scans, and are advised to keep their comm channels open at all times, while staying within fifty meters of their split-off point. Neelix, while following his tricorder's readings, sweeps the direction in which he's chosen to search. As he's walking along, a wall disperses behind him to reveal a corridor protected by a holographic image and force field, while the occupant is seen leaving his hiding place to go after Neelix. Act One Chakotay contacts Kim and explains that according to his tricorder readings he should be seeing the dilithium, but that he in fact cannot see anything. Kim, meanwhile, is running a geostratal analysis of the rock, coming to pretty much the same conclusion: no dilithium. Neelix then contacts Chakotay saying that he's found something: a large cavern about twenty meters from his position. Reading a huge dilithium formation, even against Chakotay's warning, he proceeds anyway. Upon entering the cavern, Neelix finds, just like the others, realizes that there is nothing. Exasperated, and scanning about with his tricorder and his arm-mounted flashlight, Chakotay voices his assumption and says that he's had enough. He then calls for Kim and Neelix to head back to the entry point so that they can return to the ship. Neelix interrupts Chakotay, saying that he has found some unusual readings from a rock face. Traces of organic energy are present, and seemingly about two meters into the rock. Chakotay is urgent in his warning, telling Neelix to get back to where he and Kim are. Ignoring them, Neelix turns away from the rock face as the field disperses and shows a figure standing with a device pointed at Neelix. Unaware of the newcomer, Neelix spins to face the newly-opened hallway, in shock that there's no longer a rock wall. The figure had ducked away into the shadows and lurks close by. As Neelix walks toward the entry to the corridor, the figure once again raises the device behind him. As Neelix spins around to see him, he fires at Neelix, removing his lungs. Chakotay rushes off toward Neelix's location, calling for Kim to follow. They find Neelix on the ground, flailing about, obviously in some kind of shock and unable to breathe. Beaming directly to sickbay, The Doctor orders a blood-gas infuser. Ordering Kim to hold Neelix still, he injects Neelix as he starts slipping into a coma. The Doctor states to Chakotay that Neelix does not have much time. Janeway takes an away team down to the planetoid to investigate. It does not take long until Janeway discovers and breaks through the highly-sophisticated force field masked as a rock. On board Voyager, The Doctor creates holographic lungs for Neelix, but Neelix won't be able to move even the slightest because the computer cannot compensate for any body movements whatsoever. Act Two Back on the planetoid, the away team discovers an organ storage facility. They find a door leading out of the facility where Janeway's tricorder picks up life signs twenty meters ahead. The aliens they meet are Vidiian. This Vidiian manages to escape by erecting a force field that the away team cannot disrupt. Janeway picks up some kind of device the Vidiian dropped. The Vidiian manages to leave the planet and Voyager lays in a course for pursuit. Act Three The Viidians try to escape in a hollowed out asteroid with Voyager in pursuit. Janeway orders Tom Paris to enter the asteroid, but once inside, discovers numerous reflections of the Vidiian ship and Voyager. Unable to tell which one of the ships is the real one, Tuvok devises a plan to use Voyager s phasers on low power like a search light to find the hostile ship. Act Four Once found, the Vidiians surrender and come aboard Voyager. They explain that their civilization has been plagued for centuries by a terrible disease, the "phage," and that as a result they often use body parts of other species to replenish and/or replace their own degraded ones. The Vidiian pair in custody state they have already transformed Neelix's lung for transplantation into one of them and thus are unable to retransplant Neelix's lungs back into him. Janeway is outraged at what the Vidiians have done, but she is not willing to kill the Vidiian to save her crew-member, therefore, she decides to spare their lives. She, however, warns them that next time, even the slightest transgression against the Voyager and its crew will be met with the deadliest force. Grateful at the Captain's generosity, the Vidiians offer their extensive medical knowledge to help try and save Neelix. They realize that every one of the senior staff that has been scanned is capable of donating a lung, but it is Kes who steps in as the donor. The operation is a success and Captain Janeway releases the two Vidiians. Log entries *"Captain's log, stardate 48532.4. We're on our way to a rogue planetoid which Mr. Neelix tells us is an extremely rich source of raw dilithium. If he's right, this could go a long way toward easing our power shortage." *"Captain's log, supplemental. We are pursuing the alien ship from the moon. They are not responding to hails, and it appears that our two ships are evenly matched for speed." *"Captain's log, supplemental. The aliens have successfully transplanted one of Kes's lungs into Neelix. The dampening field has been deactivated, and I have allowed them to beam back to their vessel. We are resuming a course home." Memorable quotes "We don't know how it happened... but someone has surgically removed his lungs." : - Janeway, to Kes, about Neelix's condition "They may have found a way to ignore the moral implications of what you are doing, but I have no such luxury. I don't have the freedom to kill you to save another. My culture finds that to be a reprehensible and entirely unacceptable act. If we were closer to home I would lock you up, I'd turn you over to my authorities for trial. But I don't even have that ability here, and I am not prepared to carry you forever in our brig. So I see no other alternative, but to let you go." : - Kathryn Janeway, to Dereth and Motura "If I ever encounter your kind again, I will do whatever is necessary to protect my people from this harvesting of yours. Any aggressive actions against this ship and its crew will be met by the deadliest force. Is that clear?" : - Kathryn Janeway, telling Dereth and Motura to take a message to their people "The man drives a 700,000-ton starship, so someone thinks he'd make a good medic." : - The Doctor, on Tom Paris "First they tell me there's no doctor, so I have to be on call 24 hours a day and then they tell me there's no nurses, so I have no one to assist me." "I thought Tom Paris was assigned to you." "Like I said, ''no one to assist me." : - '''The Doctor' and Kes "Indefinitely? You mean I... could be in here the rest of my life?" "Yes." "But we're trying to find the aliens that did this to you. The captain is doing everything she can." "Well... hrm, if I'm going be in here a while, now is as good a time as any to tell you. Your ceiling is '''hideous'." "''I didn't design the room, I just work here." "Something with a bit of color would help, maybe a nice tapestry or a painting. Could you dim the lights a little?" "I'm a doctor, mister Neelix, not a decorator." : - Neelix, The Doctor, and Kes "Strange, according to my readings, you are not here." "Believe me, I wish I weren't." : - Dereth and The Doctor "He's just one big hormone walking around the ship." : - Neelix, warning Kes about Tom Paris "Don't worry, I'm not going to kiss you. I'm only adjusting the restraint." "I'll try to contain my disappointment." : - Neelix s sarcastic response to The Doctor Background Information Story and Script * The original story idea for this episode, which was pitched by Timothy DeHaas, was that Lieutenant Paris had had his heart blown out by something, so The Doctor equipped him with a holographic replacement. Supervising producer Brannon Braga commented, "Tim had a wonderful idea, which was that Paris is injured and gets a holographic heart, and we were very captivated by that." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #5, p. 47) Also remarking on the pitch, Braga stated, "It was a cool idea, although the drawback is you can't leave sickbay." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * Star Trek: Voyager s writing team meanwhile had an alien concept brewing. Brannon Braga recalled, "Around that time, Jeri [Taylor], Michael [Piller] and I had been batting around the idea of an alien race that gathers organs." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) Braga elaborated, "It just so happened at that time we were brainstorming about the Vidiians, a race of aliens who harvest flesh and organs." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #5, p. 47) Remembering how they came up with this notion, Jeri Taylor stated, "We sat around a number of days talking about new adversaries. 'Who's interesting? What's interesting? What's an agenda we find interesting?' En route we came to these people who harvested organs. We'd gone through cannibalism and a lot more bizarre things and then we finally hit on the idea of a culture that was dying of an incurable virus that would go to any lengths to make themselves and their species stay alive." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * Two historical points of reference influenced the producers' thinking, at about this time: Jeri Taylor originally, according to Brannon Braga, suggested the Mayans which – with their seemingly horrific and eccentric culture, including Human sacrifice and cannibalism, but their ideological reasons for such bloodshed – provided an inspiration, and Braga himself thereafter began to speculate about how humanity and, in particular, Europeans would currently be if the Bubonic Plague had never been eradicated. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, pp. 34 & 40, et al.) Regarding his motives at the time, Braga remembered, "I thought it would be interesting to create a species that was really creepy-looking and Frankenstein-like, with cobbled together body parts and they steal organs, but they had a very sympathetic back-story." (Braving the Unknown: Season 2, VOY Season 2 DVD special features) * The desperation of the aliens attracted the producers to using them as so-called villains. Jeri Taylor explained, "The idea of a race that does really unspeakably horrible things but does them simply because they're trying to survive, we thought was a very complex kind of agenda .... If you start with a premise like that, it's impossible to make them completely evil because their motivation is completely understandable. If anything, it's more scary if you realize that underneath that grotesque, deformed body there's someone who was once young, strong and beautiful." Michael Piller offered, "I liked the idea of an alien culture who are a civilized people who are forced to do uncivilized things in order to survive." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * After coming up with this alien concept, the series' writers decided to try combining it with the pitched story idea that involved The Doctor holographically replacing Paris' heart, allowing the episode to have more varied physical settings than mostly sickbay. Brannon Braga noted, "We said, 'Well, what better thing than this?' and we put those ideas together to see what we'd come up with." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) Braga elaborated, "idea of the Vidiians seemed like the perfect match for Tim's story. We went ahead and gave the concept to Tim, and he merged it with the heart idea." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #5, p. 47) * Braga eventually refined the circumstances of the Vidiians' victim. He recalled, "Ultimately, I ended up changing the heart to lungs and Paris to Neelix." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) Braga further explained, "The lungs seemed a little less cornball than the heart, so that's what happened." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #5, p. 47) * Writer Skye Dent, a former journalist who had pitched several other story ideas to Braga, was asked to further develop the premise of this episode. Braga explained, "Skye Dent, a freelance writer, did the first draft for us. We like to try our freelancers on freelance scripts, and as is common with freelance scripts, it needed some work." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #5, p. 47) Dent herself said of the Vidiians, "I ... envisioned them as being very arrogant people. And even though they knew what they were doing was wrong in terms of the actual action, they were very confident that because they were culturally superior, they were totally justified in killing people and taking their organs." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * Dent was immediately drawn to Neelix as the center of the story, due to his relationship with Kes. The writer stated, "They were the only two on board that have any sort of defined relationship. I wanted to do a script that would affect one person and that would tear at the emotions of another so that you would see how it would affect her. I didn't want Janeway or Chakotay or any of the others to be injured because at that point nobody cared about them as much. We cared about Neelix and Kes immediately because we could see how much they cared about each other." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * Dent drew on personal experience to influence the way she wrote about Neelix's predicament. She explained, "I thought about a time when I first moved to California when I was learning how to parachute. It always seemed to me a lot of fun, and I was never really worried about it because I just figured if anything went wrong with the parachute that I would just die. And then I started hearing these stories or running into people who had actually lived – but they lived to be paraplegics. And that's part of what this story is about. Because death isn't that scary to me – having to live as a paraplegic would be even scarier to most human beings. And that's how Neelix feels." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * Brannon Braga then further developed the script. He remarked, "Dent did some very nice things with the script, but ultimately I did some work on it." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #5, p. 47) During September, October and November, , Brannon Braga was well along with writing the teleplay for this episode, after having completed the teleplay for . (A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager) Braga came up with such one-liners as, "His lungs have been removed!" He exclaimed, "I wrote 'em! C'mon, it's a TV show; it's supposed to be fun." Braga added, " His lungs have been removed!' was a fun line that I knew would sound great coming out of Robert Picardo's mouth. That's classic ''Trek." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #5, p. 47) * For the malady that the Vidiians were suffering from, it was decided that an actually existing virus would be referenced. Science consultant André Bormanis recalled, "''In the episode 'Phage,' we wanted to suggest a really vicious kind of a virus, something that ravaged this whole population of people, the Vidiians, and had driven them to this desperate situation where they had to harvest organs from other compatible species in order to survive. And a bacteria phage is a real thing .... That was a good choice for describing the deadly pathogen, the virus that had come so close to doing in the Vidiians for good." (Real Science With Andre Bormanis, VOY Season 2 DVD special features) * Brannon Braga was very pleased with how the story and its aliens eventually turned out. Of the script's final form, Braga proudly remarked, "One of my better efforts." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) Commenting on the effectiveness of the Vidiians, Braga stated, "In my opinion, the Phage aliens were our first ''successful aliens... on Voyager." (''Braving the Unknown: Season 2, VOY Season 2 DVD special features) He also remarked, "That was a great concept for an alien species. Very rarely do you stumble on something that has real resonance." (Star Trek: Voyager Companion) He elaborated, "I think we were very successful about creating, in just one episode, some interesting aliens who had a nice feel to them, even though they're not on screen a lot." In fact, Braga was so proud of his own input on the script that he decided to take credit for his work. "I don't always take teleplay credit, but in this case, I was very proud of the work I did on that show." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #5, p. 47) * In agreement with Braga's positive comments, Kenneth Biller opined, "This is a great ''Star Trek episode. The aliens that Brannon created were so interesting and so different from anything we had seen." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * The aliens were originally known as "the Phages". (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5) Their collective name was later changed to "Vaphorans," which they were called even in the shooting script. Dereth clearly mouths the word "Vaphoran" in ''Voyager s transporter room, but "Vidiian" was subsequently looped over it. Broadcast closed captions of this episode also use "Vaphoran". (Star Trek: Voyager Companion) The change from that collective term to "Vidiians" was made when it was realize that no two performers could pronounce "Vaphoran" in the same exact way as each other. (Beyond the Final Frontier, p. 276) Cast and Characters * Brannon Braga said of this episode in general, "Some really nice character work there – you can see the characters blossoming." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) Braga was particularly pleased with the episode's portrayal of Janeway. "Like any show, we were trying to develop the characters," he recalled, "and the 'Phage' episode was good for Janeway. It allowed her to kind of be protective of her crew." (VOY Season 1 DVD special features) * Actress Kate Mulgrew found difficulty in acting out the particular scene wherein Janeway – realizing what the Vidiians are doing – is both repulsed by and sympathetic to their actions. Of the scene, Jeri Taylor remarked, "We thought Janeway was put in a true dilemma when she realized what she was dealing with. In fact, Kate Mulgrew was herself fighting tears when that scene was being shot, when she heard the story of those people. She, as a person, was so genuinely affected that she was really fighting not to break down. I think that comes across in the portrayal of a woman who is torn and struggling and has great sympathy for these aliens, yet she must say, 'If you ever come near my people again, I'm going to wipe you all out. " (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * Director Winrich Kolbe was impressed by the way in which Kate Mulgrew persevered with the episode. Kolbe stated, "That was the first episode to really present ... an acting challenge to Kate. She had to deal with something that was rather decrepit and ugly looking, and had a philosophy that didn't really agree with ours .... I thought Kate did a hell of a job." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #15) * Kate Mulgrew was also ultimately very proud of both this episode and her character's role in it. "I felt very good about that one," she enthused. "The essence of ''Voyager s guts is an episode like 'Phage.' Janeway had to make ethical decisions, and I loved playing that double-edged sword between sacrificing Neelix's lungs or allowing another species to continue to survive." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #5, p. 23) Again considering Janeway's interactions with the Vidiians, Mulgrew commented, "''To them, thieving is ethically correct. How then does Janeway even talk to these people? And I loved that, because there is poignancy to that." Mulgrew was a fan of the Vidiians in general. She stated, "I loved the Vidiians. I think they, for me, were the most interesting aliens." (Star Trek: Voyager Companion) * Kenneth Biller saw additional character development in areas other than in the persona of Janeway. "It's also an episode where you started to get to know the doctor," he said, "and the character work that went on between him and Neelix was fantastic." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) Believing that he himself and Neelix actor Ethan Phillips had very different "rhythms" (such as with delivering dialogue), Robert Picardo (actor of The Doctor) remarked, "It's fun to counterpoint us, like they did really for the first time in our exchanges in 'Phage. " (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue 10) * The predicament Neelix finds himself in, in this episode, provided actor Ethan Phillips with certain ways to play the character. He explained, "It gave me a chance to display a lot of vulnerability in the guy and show the relationship with Kes progressing as he gets more into what he does on the ship as a chef and a guide." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * Robert Picardo enjoyed a particular scene involving his character of The Doctor as well as Tom Paris. Picardo enthused, "The scene in 'Phage' where I slap Paris in the face and then his hand passes through my head is a great ''Star Trek moment, a moment you couldn't do in any other television show!" (Star Trek Monthly issue 18) Props, Sets & Makeup * Senior illustrator Rick Sternbach worked on the designs of both the blood-gas infuser (a circular gizmo that The Doctor attaches to the left side of Neelix's head) and the Vidiian tool/weapon. (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #1) * According to the unauthorized reference book ''Delta Quadrant (p. 20), the subterranean Vidiian corridor of this episode was a reuse of the hidden corridor that crew members find behind a holographic barn in . * Makeup supervisor Michael Westmore designed the final look of the Vidiians. Of the starting-point for the alien designs, he noted, "The script for 'Phage' explains that these were a race of people whose skin and organs were rotting, and that they had to collect skin and organs from around the universe to preserve their race." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #2, p. 41) Ultimately, despite each Vidiian's head resembling a patchwork quilt of alien skins, Westmore decided to use merely a single mask for each Vidiian, each mask covering their respective wearer's entire head. The different skin textures were sculpted onto each mask, and then painted with a variety of colors. "It was all sculpted into one piece with different textures," Westmore related, "so it looked like overlapping chunks of stuff. actors playing Vidiians also wear dentures and contact lenses." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, page 87) * An element of creating the general alien look was to differentiate it from past Star Trek makeup designs. Jeri Taylor stated, "Working with Michael Westmore, we made sure they looked different from what we had seen on ''Star Trek and Deep Space Nine before." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 151) Michael Westmore ultimately felt that he and the producers had succeeded at making the Vidiians look unique for ''Star Trek. Midway through the first season of Voyager, Westmore enthused, "The aliens from 'Phage' are the most interesting ones that we've run into as far as a new concept and look, and something totally different. It's scary, and yet there's this element of survival involved as well." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #2, p. 41) * Both Taylor and Braga were ultimately very impressed by the alien designs. "Michael Westmore did an outstanding makeup job on them," Taylor said. "They are truly grisly-looking people without looking like horror-monster-movie stuff. We were real pleased with that." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) Similarly, Brannon Braga thought the Vidiians ultimately turned out to be "great-looking aliens, really creepy." (Star Trek: Voyager Companion) He elaborated, "I thought the makeup by Michael Westmore was just wonderful." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #5, p. 47) Production * Winrich Kolbe directed this episode straight after having directed and immediately before preparing to direct . (A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager) This Voyager episode was one of his favorite episodes of any Star Trek series he had directed, as he thought the storyline "takes aliens off that pedestal of being weird and gives them some humanity." He continued by saying of the Vidiians, "We are dealing with a very grotesque exterior but a very human emotion. These are a people who are basically dying and are trying desperately to save their species." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) Kolbe related the aliens' plight to present-day real-world societal issues. "They harvest body parts in order to maintain their own race, which begs the question, 'How far are ''we willing to go to preserve ourselves? " Kolbe mused. "''Storywise, that was a very interesting proposition." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #15) He also said, "It's something we're very aware of, given organ transplants these days." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * This episode's production period included . (A Day in the Life of Ethan Phillips, VOY Season 2 DVD special features) In fact, the documentary featurette A Day in the Life of Ethan Phillips contains a two-shot of Robert Beltran and Ethan Phillips performing the moment from the teaser wherein Neelix, wishing to join the first away team to the planet, appeals to Chakotay for permission to come along. The featurette also seems to imply that the performance footage shown took place on 12 December, although this implication remains inconclusive. * Skye Dent had reservations with the way the aliens were portrayed in the episode's coda. She explained, "Things definitely changed from the time I handed in my script, because when I saw it on the screen, the villains at the end just seemed very wimpy to me, even though they were saying the same dialogue I had written." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) Visual Effects * The exterior of the asteroid that the Vidiians use for cover, in this episode, was a six-foot painted hunk of acetone-etched Styrofoam that had previously been used to represent asteroid gamma 601, the main asteroid in an asteroid belt shown in , for which the model had been created. Joe Bauer, the visual effects supervisor on both this episode and the earlier TNG installment, simply used a different side of the asteroid model for this episode. However, other shots of the asteroid in this installment incorporate stock effects footage that was also previously used in "The Pegasus". (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, page 83) For example, two shots of the exterior of the asteroid here, seen via Voyager s viewscreen, clearly incorporate the recycled footage from "The Pegasus", as does a single panning shot of the narrow passageway that Voyager moves along, shortly after entering the asteroid. * Creating the "hall of mirrors" effect in the asteroid's interior proved to be a challenge of a magnitude requiring the ingenuity and computing power of Amblin Imaging. Using conventional model photography to try to visualize the effect of the multiple reflections would have taken several weeks and a mathematical genius to plot each angle of reflection. Due to this difficulty, Amblin instead visualized the scene by reusing the digital model of Voyager and creating the reflections using CGI. Joe Bauer commented, "We basically built the entire scene with CGI. graphics supervisor John Gross and I sat for hours and days and just played with different sizes of mirrors and ''Voyager''s and the position of the camera until we got the kinds of reflections and sizes of ships and recurring reflections going back in all directions. If our ship moved, all the reflections moved. They are all genuine reflections. The great thing about CGI is the camera and lights are invisible. In most cases the camera was actually between the ship and the mirrors, but since the camera is invisible you just see the ship." Both Bauer and visual effects producer Dan Curry were slightly unsatisfied with the digital Voyager in the foreground, however, so they photographed the studio model of the ship to be composited over the CG Voyager. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, page 81) * Depicting the Vidiian starship used both a frequently reused studio model that had originally been built for as well as a CG model that appears only in this episode and was evidently slightly different from the physical model. The most noticeable aspect of the reuse is the craft's four engines. (http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/merchantman.htm; Delta Quadrant, p. 20) * The web of reflected phaser fire was another combined use of digital effects methods. A phaser "tube" was created within the CGI asteroid interior and was programmed to correctly reflect off each of the mirrored surfaces inside the cavernous space. Joe Bauer later created, to help make the shot more believable, some foreground phaser bolts, creating these with the more traditional Harry computer animation. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, page 81) Reception and Aftermath * Brannon Braga was ultimately very pleased with the production of this episode in general. He remarked, "Music, make-up, direction – this was one of those episodes where I felt everything came together." (Star Trek Monthly issue 7) * Among the items from this episode which were sold off on the ''It's a Wrap!'' sale and auction on eBay was a Vidiian facial mask used for the character of Dereth. Continuity * After being created and introduced in this episode, the Vidiians subsequently appear in the later first season installment , the Season 2 episodes , and , the third season installment and finally in the Season 6 episode . André Bormanis noted, "It was a species that was so interesting that we had to come back and revisit them, and look at some other dimensions of surgery and the transplant technology. And certainly, ''plastic surgery is a booming business." Indirectly referring to episodes such as "Faces" and "Lifesigns", Bormanis added, "''One would think that a species that was sort of reduced to living like this would have some sort of issues about their appearance; how they relate to their bodies and so forth. And that was something we explored." (Real Science With Andre Bormanis, VOY Season 2 DVD special features) * This episode has repeatedly been likened to the [[Star Trek: The Original Series|original Star Trek]] episode . Ethan Phillips stated, "I was very pleased with 'Phage' ... although everyone on the Internet kept saying it was a ripoff of the original show's 'Spock's Brain.' Really, there are only 32 plots in the whole world, but there are infinite variations that you can play on them. I know this is TV and everything should be brand new and special, but we're going to see variations on things that were done before. We ''are going to overlap." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #3, p.21) "''Someone compared it to [''Star Trek s] 'Spock's Brain' or something like that," Michael Piller commented, before adding, "''I don't know about that." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * According to Brannon Braga, the protectiveness over Voyager s crew that Janeway demonstrates in this episode "is a trait that would develop more profoundly as the series went on." Braga continued, "She was, really, the mother of the crew. She was protecting them. She was trying to get them home. And that was her first opportunity to really do that." (VOY Season 1 DVD special features) Winrich Kolbe likewise felt that this installment was not only the first episode to present Kate Mulgrew with an acting challenge but was also the first to present "a personal challenge to Janeway". (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #15) * This episode marks the first appearance of Neelix's galley. Although the episode establishes that he created the galley by converting Janeway's private dining room without her permission, the galley would remain aboard the ship and become an oft used hang-out spot for the series' main characters, in the same way that the Ten Forward lounge is used in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Production designer Richard James stated, "The scenes that would have been played out in Ten Forward will be basically be played out in the Mess Hall. It started out as an officer's mess, but now it's just the Mess Hall. We didn't want to be elitist, so now I think any rank will be allowed there." Noting that there would also be a working kitchen, James said, "We have to put in a kitchen where Neelix can do his thing." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #1) * This is the first of several Voyager episodes in which The Doctor uses the "I'm a doctor, not a...", a catchphrase that was originated by Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy in the original Star Trek series. Of the line here, Robert Picardo recalled, "When I read that script I just thought it was a joke. Then I was told on the set this is a Bones line. I guess I remember him saying lines like that." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, p. 40) * This episode marks the debut of SIMs beacons on Star Trek: Voyager. (Delta Quadrant, p. 20) * In keeping with continuity, the fact that Neelix has – following his operation in this episode – only one lung would never be forgotten throughout the series' entire seven-year run. Video and DVD releases * UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 1.3, catalog number VHR 4003, * As part of the VOY Season 1 DVD collection Links and references Starring *Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway Also starring *Robert Beltran as Commander Chakotay *Roxann Biggs-Dawson as Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres *Jennifer Lien as Kes *Robert Duncan McNeill as Lieutenant Tom Paris *Ethan Phillips as Neelix *Robert Picardo as The Doctor *Tim Russ as Lieutenant Tuvok *Garrett Wang as Ensign Harry Kim Guest stars *Cully Fredricksen as Dereth *Stephen B. Rappaport as Motura *Martha Hackett as Seska Co-star *Majel Barrett as the computer voice Uncredited co-stars *Coleman McClary as a Starfleet engineer *Louis Ortiz as Culhane *John Tampoya as Kashimuro Nozawa *Unknown actor as Michael Parsons References 47; asparagus; biobed; bio-probe; bio-scanner; blood-gas infuser; captain's private dining room; class 3 organism; counselor; cytoplasmic stimulator; dampening field; darvot fritter; dilithium; dilithium matrix; educator; egg; eggs Benedict; electromagnetic interference; explorer; holographic emitter; honatta; hydroponics; identification matrix; immunotechnology; impulse reactor; ; ion trail; isotropic restraint; KLS stabilizer; liver; magnetic containment field; medical ethics; mess hall; neural resonator; neutronium; oatmeal; Ocampa; phage; phase modulation; phaser; physiology; pulmonary scanner; quantum imaging scanner; ration pack 5; Rectilian vulture; respiratory system; sculptor; spinal column; strawberry; Talaxian; tomato; transporter; tricorder operations manual; type 3 phaser; Vidiian; Vidiian Sodality; Vidiian starship (2371); Yallitian |next= }} cs:Phage (epizoda) de:Transplantationen es:Phage fr:Phage (épisode) nl:Phage (aflevering) Category:VOY episodes